


Silent Treatment

by skyereads



Series: Weird Things Din Does, a comprehensive list by one Carasynthia Dune of Alderaan [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Accidental Plot, Blow Jobs, Din is the bottomest of bottoms, Edging, Emotional Constipation, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Idiots in Love, Keldabe Kiss, Light Angst, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture, Mando is Moody AF, Menstrual Sex, Sexual Content, Smut, Some Plot, Vaginal Fingering, also parenting, and Cara is ON IT, mentions of child slavery(nothing graphic), poor thing needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24058396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyereads/pseuds/skyereads
Summary: In which Din is moody, but Cara handles it. Best of all, there's makeup sex. But when they run into an isolated Mandalorian covert with a different set of practices, what can they offer, but hope.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/Din Djarin, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Weird Things Din Does, a comprehensive list by one Carasynthia Dune of Alderaan [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735627
Comments: 38
Kudos: 202





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I blame all of this on Gina Carano's acting choices throughout season one.

She wasn’t sure when it started. They’d been in a hyperspace lane for a few uncountable, dismally long hours, going on days, when finally (Sweet Maker!) they stopped for a refueling and much needed moment to stretch the Child’s legs planet-side for a bit.

Cara was walking down the docked ramp of the Razor Crest to find Din yelling at the space port mechanic, the baby toddling behind her.

“Hey, hey!” She came forward, separating the two of them before Din pulled his blaster out.

“Take a walk, Mando. You’re scaring the kid!” She hadn’t meant it, immediately regretting it when Din’s face snapped so forcefully in her direction that she thought she heard his teeth clack together.

He had been in a bad mood for the last half week. And she had said it more to provoke him, feeling tired and irritable herself after being cooped up for so long with his grumpy ass. The long hours in hyperspace were rough on the body and circadian rhythms, especially since they were establishing quasi-normal sleeping hours for the kid. Din and Cara had cobbled together a schedule of eating, playing, keeping him company, and napping with him that in the wormhole of interminably long journey locked aboard the Crest.

The routine quickly dissolved, as the kid kept waking up at odd hours, wanting a distraction, or warm milk, or one of his toys to snuggle with. And for fear that he might drop the ship out of orbit, or something worse, they quickly changed tactics. It meant everyone was running on poor sleep, thus the foul moods abounded, even the Child seemed cranky.

The Mandalorian snarled one more time at the space port mechanic, something about overpriced docking fees and stomped away, taking the kid with him, who squirmed and whined while Din put him into the sling around his chest.

Cara felt sour about it, but quickly rationalized it away. If he’s angry, let him be angry, she told herself.

* * *

It was, in what later Cara would call, their relationship’s “First Fight.” Which only meant the honeymoon period was over. If one could call it a honeymoon. Or even a relationship. Since confessing their mutual desire for each other – and one lazy afternoon on Tattoine exploring their bodies’ desire for each other – Cara and Din and settled into much the same routine as before. They still slept in their separate bunks, more out of habit, and the bunks being too small for much snuggling or sex even.

They weren’t any more handsy with each other, there wasn’t much kissing or necking really – the helmet being an obvious barrier, and Cara didn’t mind. She wasn’t the type for public displays of affection anyway. In a way, it was like they were still their friendly, companionable selves. Just like before.

But sometimes, say while fixing a bone broth for the kid, or cleaning his vast weapons array, Din would look a little extra hard at her under the visor, helmet tilted _just_ enough to suggest his eyes were wandering over her form. She, practically reading his mind, would bat her eyelashes with a teasing smirk. Maybe she’d brush her ample bosom against his arm the next time they got close to each other. Definitely drop something at his feet so she’d have an excuse to bend over before him.

Just some harmless fun. They’d already been naked with each other for kriffsake! She knew he liked to watch. And that sent a little thrill up her spine.

There wasn’t much time for much sex. It didn’t suit Din anyway to be cavalier about it anyway, Cara figured; he was one to take things slow, seriously. Oh yeah, Din was intense about intimacy, and not just because it took a lot of time to remove beskar.

But she was a woman. And he was a man.

So, once or twice…oh, who was Cara kidding?! She totally kept count.

 _Twice_ , since Tattoine and their marathon Three Rounds, Din and Cara fell to the indulgences of their baser spirits.

When the kid was deeply asleep, locked in his bunk, door soundly shut, the two of them went at it one night like animals. Uncovering only what was necessary – Cara’s pants pulled down to her knees, Din’s cock jutting from beneath beskar, and one gloved hand over her mouth to prevent any sound from leaking – they rutted against the weapons locker, in a dizzying show of primal instincts that kept Cara blushing for days.

The second time was in the cockpit of all places. Din had gone planet-side after a bounty, he came back two days later with the unconscious body draped over his shoulder, shoved it in the carbon-freezer and, checking that indeed, the Child would not disturb them, came up the ladder.

Cara had been sitting with a datapad, catching up on her holodramas. The next thing she knew, Din was standing before her, smelling in all the galaxy like bitter metal and hot sand, teeming with so much adrenaline, and sweating in his extra layers (it had to have been a desert planet of course) that Cara could taste it on her tongue. He hadn’t bothered to use the fresher before greeting her, and so, gritty with two-days-worth of sand and sweat, had Cara mount him – hard and fast right in his pilot’s chair.

“Missed you,” he’d even grunted to her, hands bruising on her hips, as she bounced on his lap. As if that was all the explanation she was going to get.

No, Din was not an unfeeling man.

And Cara, nevertheless a little peeved that she had been left behind on that hunt, sitting astride him, cock still buried inside her, her pants dangling off one ankle, removed one of his gloves, kissed the bruised knuckles (guess he had knocked out that bounty with his fist), and quickly forgave him.

* * *

When left to her own devices, Cara could sniff out the closest cantina in a heartbeat. It was a gift she exploited to the best possible advantage. Didn’t even have to ask for directions – just took a quick swivel around the marketplace, made a quick survey of the landscape, and then before her very eyes, the refuge would appear before her like a lighthouse blinking its beacon for her and for her alone.

The planet they stopped on for refueling left nothing to the imagination. A seedy, mostly underworld kinda place, not too unlike Nevarro, so much so that Cara felt her first pangs of homesickness for the planet that served as modified home base for her in the recent years, even if only for a few months. The atmosphere here, unlike Nevarro, was riddled with harsh winds that ripped through the main thorough fare of the town, sand-blasted all the facades of buildings, stung the eyes, and stoppered up the lungs at the worst of it.

The cantina Cara found was dark, and dingy, populated by unsavory characters that luckily avoided her. (Since the whole Brock-incident, Cara was reticent about strangers, especially handsome ones, approaching her.) But it had cheap food, and even cheaper booze, and so Cara took her fill, released of her temperamental Mandalorian counterpart.

That is, until something pulled at her pant leg under the table and Cara was met with the all-too-familiar large black eyes of that little rascal, cooing up at her with innocent adoration. She rubbed his ears and picked him up, placing him on the sticky tabletop that had served as her office for the last few hours.

“I see you’re in a better mood,” she told the troublemaker. “Get to stretch those little frog legs of yours.” She poked the kid’s tummy playfully while he squealed, then waddled over to inspect the leftover food she’d already picked over, way more curious in that than her gentle ribbing, it seemed. And she sighed, helpless to prevent a smile tugging at her lips.

If the kid was here, that meant that –

“I need to leave him with you for a few hours.”

Yup. Right on cue: one very doleful Mandalorian cast a shadow over her table. So, he had found her. Not that it was hard, nor was she doing her damnedest not to be found; Cara was a creature of habit after all – she took a long sip of her Corellian twister as if to underscore that point.

The lurking guilt over her earlier outburst, though buried, threatened to reveal itself, and so she schooled her features gamely. Cara had been practicing for this exact moment, and so scrunched her face up in a pout, and studied her nails.

“Did you find a job?”

“Not exactly,” he answered, removing the material for the Child’s sling off his chest, and dumped a pouch of credits on the table for her.

All that practice and it flew out the window. Her face fell, and she scowled up at him, indignant. “I thought we talked about this! That you weren’t going to take any more jobs solo.” She shot at him, looking to bruise.

Din only fiddled with his vambrace, checked his weapons holster. “It’s not that. It’s something I have to do.”

“Okay! Let me finish my drink and let’s do it!”

“No,” he said. “Alone.”

His emphasis on the ‘alone’ tore Cara’s heart in two. Until she remembered she was pissed at him. She steeled herself with a retort, expressing her opposing opinion, and then she heard something familiar from behind Din.

Something like a clink of beskar.

Cara’s eyes drifted over his shoulder and fell onto the approaching figure entering the cantina. 

The drop soldier balked. Blinked twice for double assurances. But her eyes were not fooling her. It was indeed true. It was…it was _another_ Mandalorian.

Not the gold-helmeted one Cara had met on Nevarro; this was one different: grey and yellow armor, around a small frame that could only belong to a woman. A female. A female Mandalorian.

 _This_ Mandalorian came to stop at Cara’s table too, and in an economical gesture redolent of Din, she tilted her helmet very subtly in acknowledgment of her. Din had barely moved once the new companion had revealed herself.

Cara was stunned, jaw dropped, eyes no doubt bulging, caught between the two armored figures before her.

“Something’s come up,” said her Mandalorian. No, Din, just Din, Cara reminded herself.

The other Mandalorian wore a long grey cloak and had double blasters on her hips; she held herself very still, elegant and poised.

“You don’t say?!” Cara snorted, all sass and no finesse. Despite still being on edge, she relaxed back into the booth, hitched her elbow up on the table. She took the glass of her Corellian twister and saluted the two of them, downed the last sips in one impressive gulp.

“I’m going to be a few hours. Can you watch him?” Din was being cagey.

The Child watched all this with indifference, having devoured the remnants of Cara’s snack, he was now sucking on his three-fingered claw.

All of Cara’s protests fell away, like sand in the wind. She swallowed a heavy lump in her throat, wet and audible in her own pounding head, and though grimacing, she hitched up one shoulder in a shrug of what she hoped came off as indifference.

“Do what you have to do.” She made a motion to the bartender to refill her glass, and stretched, clasping her hands behind her head.

Din’s fingers flexed at his sides, as if fighting what to do with them. Then, he brought one hand up to pet the Child’s large ears affectionately, tickled under his chin, all fondly and sweet. It made the kid giggle and chirp, blinking slowly up at Din’s helmet.

“I won’t be gone long,” he said, softly, to the Child.

As he turned slightly to Cara, his shoulders seemed to harden. “Don’t wait up for me,” he said tightly.

Then with a flourish of his cape, he whipped around, and the two Mandalorians left, as silently as they had appeared. Just the heavy footfalls of their boots, and the jingle of the armor. It left a gaping pit in Cara’s stomach.

* * *

Dark clouds appeared overhead as Cara, with the Child strapped to her torso, left the cantina. They matched Cara’s thunderous mood perfectly.

She had to keep the kid covered as the wind picked up, whipping sand and dust around them, blowing Cara’s hair around, and she sprinted the remaining distance to the Crest in the port. She threw a handful of coin that Din had given her to pay the mechanic for the last of the fees, and then she stormed up the ramp, just as another heavy gust whipped up behind her, sending the space port mechanics and any stragglers on the streets to shelter.

The Crest creaked with the heavy wind, shaking like the belly of a hungry beast.

“Gonna stay asleep tonight, yeah bud?” She said to the kid as she set up his bunk for sleeping. It was his atypical nightly habits lately that had been the cause of all this irritation and, now, further bad blood between her and Din.

The Child’s ears only drooped. And Cara was gutted at blaming a fifty-plus year-old infant for her Very Adult Problems.

“Okay, c’mon” she sighed, shaking her head, and settling in next to him, her datapad in hand. “Well since Din’s not here, do I have the treat for you?”

The Child’s ears perked up instantly and he clapped his little claws.

“You remember last time’s episode?” The baby only settled deeper against her chest, getting comfortable against her tits; Cara had to laugh sheepishly at that. She turned on the holodrama on the screen before them - a guilty pleasure for both of them.

“Where that Rodian found out his lover, that Twi’lek lady, was having an affair? Well, turns out, it was with her long-lost step-brother back from the dead.”

The Child burped.

“Yeah, that's exactly what I said," Cara agreed.

* * *

When the kid, tuckered out from the day’s excitement fell asleep, about halfway through Cara’s holodrama, she closed the door, and went up the ladder to her own sleeping space behind the cockpit.

Din had not yet returned. And she was getting worried, only because the sun set quickly on this planet. She went up to the cockpit, twice in her perambulations around the ship once the Child was sound asleep, to look out the viewfinder for him. Cara turned on all the external lights, illuminating the spaceport and the docks around the Crest. Outside, the harsh winds were blowing, and while they whistled and rocked the ship, they did not bring with them her Mandalorian.

Her mind went to all sorts of dark corners. She nearly tugged her boots back on and went down the ramp herself, out into the windy night to find Din, imagining him caught in the crossfires of some faceless enemy. There, of course, were other terrible thoughts that played through her wild imagination, worthy of the holodrama she was so guiltily indulging in.

Mandalorians were rare. There must be a covert on this planet. Did Din know that beforehand? Was that why he was cagey? It was like him to be secretive about Mandalorian stuff, she knew he was protective of his people, of their customs, even to her. She had never pressed him too much. At times, she caught him speaking to the Child in the garbled language of his Creed.

Cara had no claim on her Mandalorian. On Din. Who’s to say that female Mandalorian, in the yellow and grey, didn’t have a prior one?

Of course, Cara knew, in some distant rational part of her brain that Din wasn’t the type of person to just _do_ that. Protective though he was of his people, he was not the type of person to hurt his friends, betray Cara’s trust, even if whatever they were calling their occasional _thing_ , was a tentative, if not, temporary arrangement, as far as Cara knew they were keeping it exclusive.

Wasn’t it just like Mandalorians – spread so thin already – to want to make more of them? Form little Mandalorian families, and breed little Mandalorian children, live and die among other Mandalorians. It was a dumb thought – dark and ugly, green and envious, with no basis in reality. Cara’s jealousy burned hot, then faded into a dullness that melted into her exhaustion, gave her an ache behind the eyes.

It wasn’t just convenience, what she had with Din. As a veteran, she was not a stranger to the lover of convenience, those whom she bunked merely because the thought of losing one’s life the next day, or the next battle, might mean never getting a chance again. Brothers and sisters in arms. And in bed.

With Din, Cara knew, it was already something else. Already something burgeoning beyond the capacity of her fragile heart, buried under such hard rock and stone; everything threatened to mar, break, burnish, and burn in ways she was too afraid to confront.

All of it was inconceivably stupid.

With one last sigh, she hit the switch on the external lamps, plunging the Crest into darkness once more, and went back to her bunk for some shut eye. It didn’t come easily. She kept an ear open for the cries of the Child in his bunk, in case he roused himself awake, but he was quiet. So, Cara tossed and turned.

* * *

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she opened her eyes in the blackness of the small room, to the sense that someone else was there too. She sat up, with a gasp already reaching for her weapon, and was met with faint outline of Din, perched at the end of her bunk, familiar only by a faint glow reflecting off his helmet.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

Cara blinked, adjusting to the near total dark of the room. Only the floor lights of the ladder and the emergency lights in the small vestibule outside the cockpit crept up under the door to her bunk. She couldn’t remember closing her eyes, but the slight grogginess of her limbs, told her she had been in an uninterrupted dreamless sleep, maybe even for a few solid hours.

“You told me not to wait up for you,” she said to him.

“Yeah,” he breathed loudly. “I did.”

She sensed his caginess again, just like in the cantina, but more than that, he sounded exhausted. What was he doing in her bunk anyway? He never visited her here. Why hadn’t he gone straight to his own?

Despite the obscurity of the room, she immediately felt self-conscious that it wasn’t in better condition, having thrown her clothes and weapons into a pile on the floor, even haphazardly had some junk piled at the foot of her bunk that needed to be organized. She filed all that away for later, focused back on the man – on Din – sitting on her bunk, right by her feet.

“Anything wrong?” she asked him.

The dim lighting caught in the sheen of his helmet, shimmered mesmerizingly, as he shook his head.

“No, nothing’s wrong.”

“Then what…?”

She had a faint notion that the HUD of his helmet had a night vision setting, which mean that he could see her perfectly clear. Again, she was self-conscious, not because she was in her tee-shirt and underpants for sleeping, but because it was unfair advantage that made her feel vulnerable. The man in the shadows who could see all, while he was but a silhouette, a hazy outline, in the night. It only adding the aura of mystery around him.

“I just wanted to know you made it back all right,” he said.

“You know we did.”

He was being weird. Since Sorgan, Cara knew Din’s moods like the back of her hand, and she could unweave, pull them apart like threads, like the knots of her braids. But this, his gruffness and distance – he was never one to be so evasive with her. They had shared just about everything. It was mystifying – even to a rational girl like Cara – the level of trust they had in each other, right from the moment he shared soup with her, when Cara’s defenses dropped, and she spilled her whole sob-story, even the details she never shared with anyone else. It was part of what made them a good team.

And so even his _silence_ – it all spoke of something else. She was unfamiliar with this side to Din, couldn’t untangle this one.

He shuffled to face her more fully, and his hand fell onto her knee. Then Cara figured out why he was so invisible in the near-darkness – he had removed his beskar – the chest plate, the pauldrons, even the gauntlets on his arms. The usual shiny metal was missing, so his movements were freer, unweighted, and he blended right into the background.

If seconds passed like years, it was eons before he spoke again. “Cara,” he said, so softly it was almost lost in the shadows between them. “Can I stay here?”

“In my bunk?” She asked incredulously, higher pitched than she meant to sound.

“Yeah,” he said, like it was obvious.

They hadn’t shared a bed since that time they blew up some Imps. “Sure, Din, sure.”

It felt like the start of an apology. Maybe on both their parts.

She made room for him, sliding closer to the wall so he could lay next to her. But, nope, instead, this tall, lanky man tucked right in close and spread himself half on top of her. He had, indeed, removed all his armor, even his flight suit – wearing just a worn shirt and sleeping shorts.

“Coulda taken your blaster off,” she pointed out, wiggling to get comfy around all his literal sharp edges.

He stilled her with a firm press of his large hand on her hip. “Not my blaster,” he said all gruff-like.

Cara blushed: “oh.”

The Mandalorian was already entangling their legs and laying his head down on her shoulder, his forehelm skimming across her cheek. As much as Cara wanted to be present with him in this moment, with the way he just overwhelmed all her senses, there were still questions that irked her, and in the dark room she gave them a voice.

“That Mandalorian…” Cara started.

“Don’t,” said Din, tightening his hand on her hip.

“Who was she?”

“Later.”

She frowned but figured he was right, sure, sure, there was a time and a place. She trusted he would tell her. Eventually.

Din pressed his massive boner into her side again.

“Careful,” she tutted at him, “could regret going down that road.”

His hand dragged down to the top of her thigh. The confines of the bunk suddenly felt oppressive, stuffy, and much too small for the likes of two fully-grown adults.

“I mean, I certainly won’t,” Cara hastily added with blatant shamelessness. She swallowed, audible in the small room. “Just…if you want to start something, you better finish it.”

Din caressed sweetly on her bare thigh, almost to the point of ticklish. He rolled his hips, lazily at first then with deliberation, every little hump at her side like a shock of fire, straight to her pussy.

“Don’t I ever,” he whispered.

He scratched his thumbnail at the edge of her underpants – tight, black obviously, hugged her curves nicely, made her ass look great, but a flimsy thing. No match for the pool of wetness gathering in her crotch.

“Cara,” said Din, low and suggestive. His voice so close she could hear it coming from underneath the lip of his helmet more so than through the modulator. Cara shivered.

Yup. This Mandalorian was a certified panty-ruiner.

“Hm?”

“Can I fuck you?”

Cara’s mouth spewed forth a liberally painted curse. Her libido was on fire. If there was one thing Cara forgot about fights in relationships – even quasi-ones – it was the makeup sex.

It didn’t take that much maneuvering to get Cara’s panties off her legs and shucked to the floor, nor for Din to trace large patterns up her leg until his fingers found her slickness and he breached her, all the way to his knuckles. He worked her up, twisted and scissored those impeccable fingers. He bent her leg back until it was practically at her shoulder, and Cara thought she might split in two.

With an impatient growl, he dropped his shorts, lifted the hem of his shirt up his torso, and entered her.

She groaned so loud and vulgar at the _fullness_ of him that Din had to cover her mouth with his hands. That made her even more wet. She nibbled, scraped her teeth across his palm.

“Oh, I should punish you,” she said, darkly, looking up at his T-visor from under her long eyelashes. She dragged her tongue along his hand, Din made a sound suspiciously like a whine, grunted as he gave a particularly firm series of thrusts so the whole bunk shook.

“Leaving me all alone in here,” Cara panted, sucking around his thumb. She lifted the hem of her own shirt until it came up over her tits, she kneaded them in her own hands, pinched her nipples. Din groaned, encouragingly.

More of Cara’s words spilled out, charging the air between them. “I should get a vibrator. Sync it to your vambrace, so you’ll know when I’m using it.”

The bunk gave another tremendous shake, slammed into the wall and Cara shivered, heavy-lidded. _Gods_ , he was huge. She suckled more of his fingers into her mouth, wetting them obscenely.

Din, all hazy before her, one hand at the back of her knee, guided her leg to open wider, and it changed the angle so abruptly his cock slipped out. Cara felt the sweet slide of his heavy slick cock across her clit.

“Maybe have you control it remotely,” she continued, tight and pitchy. She hitched her hips forward, catching every drag of his cock. “Oh! Next time you decide to leave me alone here for a job, I’m gonna stick that thing so far up my cunt. Sit right in your cock–”

She growled roughly as Din entered her again, with a wet sound that made her ears burn, once again picking up a ruthless pace.

“–pit. And _squirm_ until you get back,” she finished roughly.

“I’m sorry,” he grunted, as he jacked his hips. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry. _Oh_ , Cara – you’re so tight.”

Cara rubbed furiously at her own clit, crying out, her orgasm building so sweetly, so mouthwateringly good.

“Oh, I won’t even let you touch me. I’ll just make you sit on your knees before me and watch while I – while I –” Cara’s hips bucked and her pussy clenched and clenched around his cock, a searing heat rising in her gut, blowing like a balloon about to burst –

Din’s hands fell to her hips and gripped them tightly.

“While I f-fuck myself in your –” Cara’s back arched dexterously, and she gulped down air, mewling as she rubbed more forcefully at her clit. “Oh, make you watch while I fuck myself – in your –”

“Gonna cum,” he whined, having the decency to warn her.

She felt his pulsating cock, and she went plunging right over the edge, shouting like she was punched in the gut.

He thrust into her until they were both empty. Until Cara was pleasantly sore, and superbly sated and sticky. They both whimpered as he pulled out, tenting his hips, and pressing his cool forehelm right over her fiercely beating heart.

“We should fight more often,” she told him. If it always ended like this. She ran her hands up and down the knobs of his spine, straightened out his wrinkled tee-shirt, still halfway pulled up his torso.

Din made a sound like a laugh and groan. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that,” Cara conceded, smiling.

The heavy gusts from the planetary windstorm rocked against the Crest, otherwise it was all quiet.

“Stay here, I’ll get something to clean you up,” said Din, rising to his feet, but wobbled almost as soon as he stood, bracing himself on the edge of the bunk.

“I have to piss anyway,” she said, and followed him, jelly-legged, down the ladder to the fresher.

They kept giggling like teenagers in their foggy-brained, post-coital clumsiness. Din shushing her, all too cognizant that the Child was miraculously still asleep through all their fumbling. Cara would slide her hands up Din’s shirt up to kiss his collarbone, or wrestle a brown nipple into her mouth, where he was most ticklish, as he tried to wipe a washcloth over his own cock and his thighs. When he lent his hand to tidy her up, the warm scratch of the damp cloth on her sensitive skin sent her into a blissed out state that she had to grip the tiny sink behind her and bite her lip in an effort to muffle a low moan; head falling back exposing her neck, the pert buds of her nipples showing through her tee while Din wiped smooth circles on the inside of her thighs.

When she came to, a few seconds later, heady, still bristling with arousal, there was an odd, imploring tilt to Din’s helmet leaning over her. She arched a perfectly coquettish brow at him.

“You’re so beautiful.” He said it like he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

Cara’s instinct was to punch him in the arm, but she sensibly held back. It was so like Din to be so _serious_ , even in the fresher.

She scoured her mind for some semblance of something equally exquisitely intimate, or wistfully romantic to say back to him. Something that spoke of the warmth in her belly, that was not hunger or unsatiated lust, but something mellow, easy, and familiar, like the balmy Alderaan sun on her face after a rainy day.

Instead, she told him: “I can’t piss if you’re watching!”

Din forced so much air out his mouth, all it made was blaring static in the vocoder; no doubt rolling his eyes under his helmet, he scurried up the ladder.

When Cara joined him later, having somehow found her underpants on the mess of items on her floor and shimmied them back on, he had already made himself amazingly comfortable on _her_ bunk.

“Don’t you have your own bed?” she poked him, settling in on top of him.

“You really going to do that?” He asked her, as their limbs once again tangled together until there was no telling which leg belonged to which body. He grazed her lips with his thumb. “All that? All that you said?”

Cara’s blush came back. “What? Fuck myself in your cock…pit?” she teased. “Maybe. It’s a good idea, yeah?”

Din didn’t answer, just sighed, not exasperated, as was his wont to Cara’s ridiculousness, but almost thoughtfully, like maybe he was mulling it over.

“Hell of a week I’ve had though,” Cara continued, rubbing her cheek on his chest. “First you give me the silent treatment for days. And then you raw me into next week –”

“Cara!” His hand flew up as if to stopper her words.

But Cara’s mouth kept barreling ahead: “I mean seriously! I can’t read your mind, tinhead.”

She rapped on his helmet. “You gotta tell me what goes on inside there! What’s been bothering you? I’m not going to fly away at the first sign of trouble, Din. You know that, right?”

She turned softer, she nudged him. “I wasn’t kidding what I said: that it was you, and that it meant everything. But, you gotta _talk_ to me. You’re my person.”

He was silent for a long while. Cara’s head on his chest, rising and falling with each of his breaths.

“I lost track of the days,” he finally said.

“Yeah, you and me both.”

She thought back to their travel in that hyperspace lane for hours and hours on end – it had been five whole days of travel, but it had felt like longer. It seemed like all sense of time had dripped away, fallen behind, and she, and Din, and the Child were floating in some otherworldly existence.

“I mean…I hadn’t meant to. But I did. I’m always extra grumpy this time of year.” He paused, took an extra deep inhale. “It was my birthday.”

Cara turned her face, looking at the faint outline of the beskar, more visible now that she was used to the dark. “What? When?”

“Yesterday,” he said. “Or rather, I guess, two days ago now.”

“Your birthday? Din! You could have said something!”

“I told you I lost track. Besides,” he heaved, tired and hurt. “I’d rather not have to think about it. It always comes with a lot of…baggage.”

Cara pushed her face into his neck. “You’re unbelievable,” she whispered, right into the soft part of his neck where she felt his fluttering pulse under her lips, she kissed him there. “You could have said something.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, tinhead,” she snarked. “I’m the one that doesn’t have a present for you.”

He only chuckled, patted her butt. “This works.”

“Din,” Cara started, all serious suddenly, wanting to say more, but at a loss where to start.

The turmoil this man goes through, she thought sympathetically; it must get so lonely in that tin can.

“Not now,” he said softly. “Get some rest. I need your sharp eyes tomorrow.”

“Din,” she whispered, one more time.

“What?” He breathed back.

Cara drew in the scent of him all around her, mingled with the sting of their sex, and a cut of the metallic. “Happy birthday.”

* * *

When Cara opened her eyes in the morning, she was surprised to find Din still lying next to her. Not only that but the Child was sitting upright on his chest, holding Cara’s datapad, biting one edge of it and drooling all over it, from what Cara could see.

“How’d you get in here?” She asked the little green menace, who only gurgled something in his baby talk, mouth still firmly chewing around her datapad.

“What’s he doing with this?” Din said softly, stirring out of his sleep and petting the kid’s green ears.

The scene was strangely…domestic. And to a soldier like Cara she wanted to make a dirty joke about how lucky they were he didn’t decide to join them in bed while he was railing her to the bunk last night. But she kept it to herself, tucking herself against Din’s radiating body heat.

Din took Cara’s personal item from the Child’s grasp, but he whined and made grabby hands for it back, while Din wiped the spittle off it with his shirt.

Guess it was time to wake up, Cara sighed, and reluctantly pulled away from Din’s extra-warm torso.

“You’re not showing him any of those holodramas you’re so fond of, are you?” He cocked his helmet at her, sitting up.

Cara fumbled with her pants. She flashed him a look of flagrant disbelief, even putting her hand to her chest in a show of hurt. “Din! That would be wildly inappropriate! I can’t believe you think I would do that!”

Din only shook his head with a barely concealed chuckle, and picked up the kid from the bed, going in search of food.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cara learns a thing or two about patience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> plot here. mentions of child slavery (nothing graphic)

When they came into view from the transparisteel in the cockpit of the Razor Crest, Cara couldn’t tell exactly what they were, to her eyes they looked like large floating pinwheels, as big as any mountain.

There was nothing else to see on this planet. They flew over boulders – naked, jutting forms, that resembled monstrous sedentary beasts, their jagged outline shaped by millennia of tumultuous winds - or the occasional thicket of shrubbery; its strong root systems clinging so desperately to shale rock they created their own islands of dirt in a vast ocean of silt. The land out here on this planet was too rough for agriculture to sustain large populations, so the natives had burrowed their villages underground, lived scattered and isolated. The rough hue of the spaceport was the only outline on the otherwise flat and barren wasteland.

It meant it was the perfect place for a Mandalorian covert.

As the Crest eased closer, the ugly durasteel forms of the pinwheels became clearer. Wind turbines, they were near a wind farm. Din’s expert piloting kept Cara from mentioning her concern as the ship dipped in the fierce headwind, bluntly hitting along its front like a fighter looking for a weakness. They landed in a spot in the shadows of the wind farm. Underneath them directly, Cara craned her neck – long skinny poles sticking out of the ground, white as bone, with four large-fan shaped wings, rotating in the wind. The turbines made an enormous sound.

Before they left the cockpit, Din pulled a data chip from the navi-comp system and pocketed it. As the Crest's side ramp lowered, Cara saw the outline of a building up ahead, which rose out of the flatness of the horizon before Cara with such suddenness, she was shocked she couldn't see it from the air. It blended neatly into the land, tucked away so expertly that the eye was tricked by the flatness and the barrenness that it practically hid in plain sight.

It was flat, unobtrusive, colored a rustic sandy brown, that it matched exactly the pigments of the dry earth. Cara couldn’t tell how far along it extended, or how deep it went.

A figure approached them: metal beskar outline winking in the sunlight.

It was the same Mandalorian from the cantina: yellow and grey armor, double blasters at her hips. She raised her arm in greeting, waving them over to the entrance to the building, where three speeder bikes were parked.

Their pace quickened across the earth, concerned about the noise of the turbines, and the flying dust and silt around them that stung their eyes; Din's cape covering the Child on his chest. Cara ducked her head and followed on Din’s heels as they passed through large metal doors, which slid and locked shut behind them.

Cara blinked rapidly, adjusting to the bleak lighting of the space, ears ringing in the sudden quiet. Whatever this place was, it completely insulated the sound of the wind turbines outside.

“Thank you for returning,” said the female Mandalorian, in an oddly warm tone despite the neutrality of the modulator. She rapped her fist on her cuirass and bowed slightly. “And to your companions, welcome!”

Din returned the gesture and elbowed Cara to do the same, who copied, though a little clumsily. When Cara lifted her gaze, she was met with the impassive grey visor of the armored helmet trained directly on her gawking even behind the mask. The trick with Mandalorians was not letting them get to you, Cara lilted her chin higher and stared right back, shifting her weight to display the blaster at her side like a challenge.

It seemed to work. The woman gave a nod so small, Cara thought it was a trick of the lights, and then said: “Please come, my sisters are waiting!”

She turned and led them down a rickety metal staircase, descending underground.

Cara observed their surroundings while they followed the female Mandalorian. The staircase overlooked a large open plan area that must have served as the main power station of the wind farm. There was heavy machinery, large wire cables shooting forth from generators. Here, the wind power would be converted from the turbines into electricity and then sent along a network of underground cables to the surrounding towns.

Despite the terrible harshness of the outdoors, the large opaque interior was sweetened by a cool, fresh, intermittent draft. Strong enough to play with the ends of Cara’s hair. Across one whole side of the wall, Cara spotted a bone-white blade, longer than even the Crest. She mistook it for skeleton of some mythical beast, but she quickly realized with was a spare part to the turbine fan.

Two more Mandalorians awaited them at the bottom of the staircase, in similar grey armor coated with fading colors of yellow. The sets could be identical to an unobservant outsider, but to the trained eye they were distinct. There was an appreciative intricacy in the way Mandalorians carved their identity into their beskar and Cara briefly wondered why Din never bothered to paint his.

This duo gave the same greeting. Cara and Din returned the gesture, fists to their chest with a small bow, the Child quietly observed all this from his sling amidst Din's armor.

Din's low voice came close to her ear. "Don't freak out."

Cara tried to shoot him a puzzled look. Why would Mandalorians freak her out? She was already cool with all this so far wasn’t she? The flight out to the middle of nowhere, the desert nothingness, the apparent reveal of a Mandalorian covert in what Cara could only assume was an abandoned wind farm; she was a trained soldier for kriffsakes – freaking out was not in her –

The three Mandalorian women all reached up and were pulling their helmets over their –

Cara’s stomach plummeted and she gasped so loudly even Din flinched. Her hands flew to her face. “I didn’t see anything! I didn’t see your faces!” she shouted, clamping her eyes shut.

“What’s wrong with your friend?” Cara heard a high-pitched voice ask from her left side. It was the unmodulated voice of one of the smaller Mandalorians. There was a giggle-snort, and then a quick shushing, as the girl was reprimanded in the harsh tongue of their language.

“It’s all right.” Din’s dulcet tones beside her.

“I can wear a blindfold. You can put –”

“It’s okay!” Din’s hands enveloped her wrists. “Open your eyes.”

“But the Creed! They don’t know I’m not...not one of them!”

“Cara,” Din pleaded. He tugged gently at her wrists, until she relaxed her arms, slowly lifting her head, keeping her eyes trained on his beskar head. “I’m sorry,” he said, all gently, like they were whispering in Cara’s bunk.

“I should have warned you sooner,” he said, taking her hands in his and bringing them to her sides. From his sling on Din’s front, the Child mewled comfortingly. “It’s okay,” Din repeated. “You can look.”

“We are the Taj sisters,” said the Mandalorian woman.

Cara chanced a glance at the humanoid women in armor around them. The tallest, clearly the oldest, had jet black hair, sleek and shiny, interwoven with braids that fell past her shoulders; her dark, shining eyes, were outlined in kohl having the effect of striking beauty – fierce, but noble. Cara thought of a Tigress, the grey-and-yellow armor like her stripes. The resemblance between the three women was obvious. They all had the same thick, dark hair but in different styles; beside this first one, there was a middling sister with a straight-edged chin-length bob, and the youngest, who had a pixie cut with a wild asymmetrical streak of grey.

“We are the only Mandalorians on this planet,” the eldest sister Taj continued, “and we do not hide our faces here. Beroya, did you bring it?”

Din pulled out the data chip he had brought from his navi-computer. “The coordinates of our mutual friend,” he said. “I do not know how useful it will be, or if she will still be there. The information is already a few weeks old.”

The middle sister took the data chip from Din, tucked it into her utility belt.

“We are grateful all the same," the eldest one spoke. "It is not every day we hear that coverts have survived. The Foundlings will surely benefit.” Her elegant face softened into a genuine grin when it landed on the little one and his flapping ears. “You must be hungry, travelers.”

* * *

As they followed the Taj sisters deeper into the power station, Cara couldn’t take her eyes off the back of their heads.

“So?” She said, slowly, dragging out her vowels and keeping a conspiratorial whisper between them, not wanting the sisters to overhear.

“So what?” Din murmured back.

“So…” she repeated. “This is…weird, right?”

“Not that weird.” Din’s whole body lurched subtly, as if he resented Cara’s obtuseness. “I knew there were other coverts. But now do you understand why I had to do this alone yesterday?”

Cara frowned. “Um, ok, not the direction I was going in but, yeah. I mean I already forgave you. Makes sense. Being wary of outsiders.” She rose her eyebrows at him, dropped her voice even lower. “I take it I’m only here now because of your flattering personal recommendation.”

Din snorted noisily. It drew one of the sisters to turn around to stare at them.

Cara rolled her eyes, could only imagine what Din connotated by _personal_. “No,” she said, “I mean –”

Din was getting antsy. “What? What do you mean?”

Cara gave him a look – like, was he that daft?

But Din just threw his hands up, like he had no idea what direction she was going in, and yeah, maybe he was that daft.

Cara indicated dramatically with her head in the direction of the sisters, shifted her eyes pointedly to them, walking a few paces ahead. Nonverbally she drew a picture for Din, making the connection between the sisters and him, waggling her brows and pinching her lips for added significance.

It was all a lost on Din.

Vexed, Cara threw her own hands up. “Really?!” She hissed at him. “C’mon! C’mon…this must be weird for you. It’s weird for you right? The whole…”

She jiggled her hand in front of her face. _That_ clued him in.

Din growled, jerked his helmet roughly, indicating to Cara that the sisters were _right there_ , and they should _definitely not_ be talking about this _right now_.

They fell into stubborn silence. But only for two more full strides.

“So, it’s… _not_ weird for you then?” She asked only to clarify.

“What! Yes!” Din yapped at her like a Wookiee with a thorn in its paw. Cara’s legs stuttered to a halt.

“Everything all right, beroya?” Called the taller Taj sister. They had also halted and were looking back curiously at the two of them.

“Yes.” Din turned diplomatic. “We’ll catch up with you. Just give us a minute.”

The woman only nodded sympathetically, while her younger sisters exchanged bemused glances with each other, covering embarrassed chuckles behind their hands.

Din tugged on Cara’s wrist until they reversed a few paces, so they were really well out of earshot, and then let her have it.

“It’s fine,” he snarled. “It’s fine, okay! What am I supposed to do about it? They’re still Mandalorians, aren’t they? Right?”

Cara was staring at where his hand was still encircled around her wrist.

“It’s not my place to tell them their Creed is wrong. It’s fine. Just go along with it. Okay? It’s just – different…it’s just…” His breathing was sounding a little irregular.

“Hey,” she said with trying patience, though she wasn’t one for patience, or trying really. She approached this as if she was, well - aptness of the metaphor aside - as if she was going to pull a thorn out of a Wookiee’s paw.

“I won’t even pretend to _try_ to understand what must be going through that tin head of yours right now," she said, searching along his visor for where his eyes were. "But, you spent your whole life wearing that thing. And you’ve found out that these Mandos don’t! Does this mean there are others that - ”

“Stop! Just...No. We're not entertaining any more ideas of that. I’m – I’m…” His grip tightened on her wrist, looking over his shoulder to where the sisters were. “I’m doing them a favor. They asked for – I’m just trying - You don’t even know...the half of it. They…”

And then her Mandalorian wilted.

Cara's glove was already off. She tugged on the thick material around his neck, pulling aside the both the cape and the soft flight suit underneath, until her fingers found bare skin under his jaw, caressing along his neck. His body listed, sagging into her touch, and she felt the wild flutter of his pulse under her fingers – still a man, even under all that metal.

The kid’s head craned to look upside down at his father, warbling noises of comfort.

“I have no doubts your intentions are honorable here. I know you. You’re a good man,” she said, pouring every ounce of sincerity into it, hoping it was enough to soothe him. She waited until his breathing evened out. “What do you need from me?”

“I need you…” His sigh stirred with hidden depths. “I need you to be fine with it too. Even if you’re not.” He was starting to sound sturdier already. Cara's hand still touching warmly on his neck.

"I'm only thinking of you," she shook her head vehemently. "Of what you must be going-"

"I know." He reassured with a gentle squeeze of her wrist. "I know. Thank you. Now do this. For me.”

Cara's lips hardened into a thin line, but she nodded, begrudgingly.

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen here. The Taj sisters, they never knew other coverts survived. They’ve been isolated out here. That data chip I gave them, it has my Armorer’s coordinates on it.”

Every few months, Din received a ping – an incoming coded transmission of coordinates sent by his Armorer from the Nevarro covert. They arrived every so often, from each new location she went in service of seeking a new location for the Tribe.

They took up pace again, following in the direction where the others had gone.

“The tall one, the eldest. She knows of my Armorer from years ago. I thought it’d be useful to them. Bring their Foundlings to a new covert.”

“You mean they have children here?” Cara tugged on her glove.

As they turned a corner, Cara’s eyes fell upon them. And it was the greatest of all the day's shocks.

The Taj sisters had re-designed the interior of the power station. In the center was a seating area made up of and mismatched upturned crates for chairs and tables, a play and living area, and a makeshift galley wafting with the smells of a hearty stew cooking. All of the effort was in service of the most diverse cluster of children Cara had ever seen this side of the galaxy. Ranging in ages from five to sixteen was a group, made up of including humanoid, a Zabrak, a pair of Twi’leks, a couple Weequays, a Rodian, and one or two other unidentified species. They were all in various, raggedy states of dress, but healthy looking, with smudged faces, and Cara counted about twenty, hopeful, shining sets of eyes.

“This is them,” said the eldest Taj sister. “The Foundlings.”

* * *

Cara and Din were ushered to sit at one of the makeshift tables. Soon steaming bowls of whatever delicious food they had been cooking were set before them, and even Din, despite his best efforts in declining, was given a bowl. It wasn’t bad – a little spicy for Cara’s taste, with some thick pieces of some meat in it (Cara didn’t want a specification). Food was food. And it was warm. Better than any ration bar.

The Foundlings sat nearby, served bowls as well, and ate with relish, grinning from behind their bowls, some whispering among themselves. On the whole, Cara noticed they were awfully quiet for a group of children.

The eldest Taj sister introduced herself as Elva, picked up one of the smaller boys and set him on her lap, ruffling his hair playfully as he slurped messily from his soup bowl.

“Apologies if any of this is a repeat, beroya, but your friend here looks like she could use an explanation,” the woman said. She spoke with a certain regal authority, not harsh, but commanding in a maternal way. “A couple months ago it came to our attention that this planet is a conduit of the slave trade. We started tracking the incoming arrival of slaver ships to intercept them, disrupt their supply line, and, as you see, steal their cargo. We've brought them all here."

As Elva explained the picture became clearer. The traffickers were not happy about the loss of their business. Mandalorians were attacking their cargo ships, setting them on fire while they rescued as many children as possible. So, they started heightening security. Hiring mercenaries to protect their payloads. The last attempt the sisters made ended badly, they were only able to save but one child.

“The safest thing we can do is bring them to a larger covert. We have meager supplies here and can only go into town every so often without attracting unwanted attention. I’ve been trying to get in touch with other coverts, but the old scramble codes can be unreliable, as others may be listening. In some cases, the commlinks simply do not exist anymore. This beroya, his visit here is fortuitous. Fate, I think," said Elva with a sparkle in her eyes.

“He’s our savior!” Squeaked the youngest Taj, a girl really, no more than twenty, named Nel.

Din, modest as ever, merely nodded, too occupied with prepping the soup for the kid to eat.

“Many of these children are too traumatized to speak,” Elva continued, casting a protective eye over them. “Many do not even remember their own names. But we do what we can. Make them feel safe here.”

Cara pushed her bowl of food away, queasy at the thought of what unimaginable horrors these youngsters could have already been exposed to. A potent mix of dread and ire poured like liquid fire down her spine.

"Why are we just sitting here? We should be out there ending it once and for all! Destroy the whole fucking fleet, if we have to! Make them pay for dealing in child slavery.”

“Cara,” Din warned from her side.

“No!” She turned brusquely to Elva, the oldest, the one most likely to see this her way. “Look. These slavers, the mercenaries – who do you think pays them: Imperials!” Cara spat the word, cheeks aflame. “Or whatever’s left of them. And if you’re considered enough of a threat to, they will not hesitate to wipe all of you out. For good. That’s why you have to make a stand. Now. While the merc loyalties are still divided.”

“Passionate, this one,” said Elva with a twinkle in her eye. “But no, our priority is the Foundlings. We risk too much exposure by doing that.”

“They’re Mandalorians,” said Din, soft-spoken and earnest. “That reputation alone will keep slavers and mercs from risking too much.”

“Are you really agreeing with this?” Cara glared at him.

He only gave a weary sigh.

“He’s right,” Elva conceded, stepping in with her words. “Those that haven’t run from us, will do so soon enough. We are safe, for now.”

“And then what? They’ll come to you out here, sitting defenseless in the middle of nowhere –” bristled Cara.

“Not defenseless,” said Zar-El, the middle sister. “We have plenty of weapons.”

“And?! Rattle the Imperials enough and it won’t be worth a damn thing if they catch you by surprise!”

How could they just sit back and not _do_ anything?! Her head reeled. These were children. She looked over the group of them sitting nearby, traumatized into silence. _Children_.

An uncomfortable hush settled over the group of adults. Even the Child sensed the changed nature and huddled closer to his father. Cara shot pleading, impassioned looks to each sister in turn, her blood boiling.

It was Din speaking, stoic and steadfast, that broke up Cara’s spiraling thoughts. “There’s no way of knowing how far this goes. The best thing for these Foundlings is to be taken far from here, given a chance at a normal life. The Mandalorians will ensure that no more harm will come to them.”

“You have a big heart, soldier,” said Elva admiringly to Cara from her side of the table. “But part of being raised by a warrior race is knowing when to pick your battles.”

The woman’s dark eyes danced in the yellow lights around them. “Yesterday when my sister arrived with another Mandalorian, for the first time in a long time I felt hope. I’d heard so many stories that there were no more of us. That our people were truly all gone.”

Elva Taj turned her ardent, tear-stained gaze onto Cara’s own darkened, turbid one. And the Rebel Shock Trooper found herself crumbling under it – the fight leaking out of her and her chin wobbled; eyes stinging, she ducked her head to hide it.

“Let us deal with these slavers as we choose,” said Elva with resolve.Then the armored woman shook herself, sighed. “But no more talk of this dreary stuff. Zar-El bring out the cider! Our guests are thirsty. We’ve been saving it for special occasions.”

And so, drinks were poured into mugs, and the uneasy tension spilled away. Slowly, but assuredly, the mood around the table shifted, and a tentative gentleness was found once again.

While Cara sat there, brooding over her meal, the conversation carried on around her. Her attention was pulled over to the little Founding she had become so close to; he was tipping the bowl of soup back far too quickly that Din had to pull it out of his grasp, telling him, in so many words to slow down, or he would give himself a bellyache.

Cara's belly twisted into hot, fluttery knots and she gulped down more cider to quell it. Not as strong as Corellian twisters, but it was something. Sensing her lingering mood, Din's hand bridged the divide between them, fell to her knee, squeezing lightly.

“Beroya!" Elva exclaimed. "Your Foundling has quite the appetite, he’s eaten more than you."

“It’s kinda ugly, isn’t it?” muttered the one called Zar-El. The other sisters murmured in agreement.

Cara jolted, offended. She was about to round off about how some people were just _blind_ , and that the Child was clearly adorable.

But Zar-El, just continued speaking to her younger sister, taking out a knife from her boot to stab at the chunkier pieces of the stew and bring them to her mouth. “To think you nearly shot the beroya upon sight yesterday.”

“Only because I thought he was an imposter,” Nel said with embarrassed flush that rose right to the roots of her pixie cut. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen a Mandalorian on this planet. When you answered in Mando’a, I figured you really were one of us.” Nel took another giant spoonful of the stew in her mouth, then swung the utensil between Din and Cara dramatically. “So, how long you two been partners?”

“We met about a year ago,” Din answered with characteristic rigidness.

“Hm, just like Mandalorians to be so certain about picking their –” And here she said some weird word that Cara didn’t quite catch…like reed-oo-er, rid – rid…

Din erupted into coughing fit which he politely hid by pretending to look away. Zar-El hissed at Nel, like she had said a naughty word.

“Sorry, what?” Cara asked, blinking confusedly between the three sisters, coming out of the fog of her mood.

Nel turned even pinker. “Just asking,” she said in a small voice, nudging her sister. “Why else would he say he trusted her with his life?”

Cara sat gaping, staring into the bottom of her mug. She downed that cider much too quickly, perhaps the sisters wouldn't mind if she had another pour.

“Nel’ika, the man is doing us a great favor, we will not pry into his private life,” Elva reprimanded, though it was without any real anger.

“I don’t know what that word means,” Cara admitted, helping herself to the jug of cider, wondering why in the stars Din, having not eaten, seemed to have swallowed something down the wrong pipe.

They fell into an awkward silence after that.

“I like your tattoos,” Nel said, gently to Cara, her eyes trailing between the two of them. “I’m thinking of getting one myself.”

Zar-El snorted, gave another vicious stab at the mystery meat in the stew. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Just haven’t told you yet!”

The knife swerved dangerously close to her sister’s face with her wild gesticulation. “Well, who else are you going to tell?”

“Did they hurt?” Nel asked Cara, choosing to ignore her sister.

Then the discussion veered into tattoos for a long while, and it temporarily cheered Cara, watching the sisters' antics and amicability. With a pang, she thought of her brothers, and then whisked that thought away as quickly as she could.

At one point, while the meal was winding down Elva interrupted their conversation. “Nel, I believe you’re on watch duty.”

The youngest Taj pouted. “Ah, come on. I was just going to ask the beroya about his travels around the galaxy. Is it true you’ve killed people?” She turned, an almost dreamy glaze in her young eyes. Even, Zar-El, picking her teeth with the point of her trusty knife, looked interested in what Din would say.

“I’ve always wanted to be a bounty hunter,” said the youngest one, dreamily.

“You can ask him after you finish the watch,” Elva said. “You are staying, yes?” She turned to Din.

“We’ll be leaving soon,” he said stiffly. Then, the fearsome Mandalorian bounty hunter caught the eyes of the gathered faces around him, the downturned looks on the three sisters’, and even Cara couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I mean,” he corrected, buckling under the pressure. “Soon enough.”

While Cara wouldn't mind staying longer, especially now that she was just warming up the Taj sisters, she also knew Din's anxiety about getting back to the Crest, and back on track. They had more planet hopping to do, but this – this was a nice reprieve. Even the kid was getting to be, well, a kid. Even if just for a little bit.

“Whatever you are comfortable with,” Elva grinned. The Foundling in her arms was playing with her long braids. “If you don’t mind, we have afternoon lessons to attend to. Come children! We will see them later.”

Elva rounded up the smallest of the Foundlings, with the help of the older ones picking them up and shuffling them along. A few waved timid farewells.

Din left with the middle sister, helping clear up the dishes. While Cara sat back with another strong pour of the cider, she kept the kid in her sights while he played on the floor nearby with some blocks.

Nel, checking on her double blasters, went over to stand by Cara. “I didn’t want to say this in front of him, or my sisters,” she said quietly. “But you know, your Mandalorian made the exact same arguments yesterday.”

“Oh, no, he’s not my Manda –”

But the young woman had already donned her helmet and went off toward the entrance for her guard rotation.

“…lorian…” Cara sighed into her cider mug. Her thoughts a mess.

There was a noise by her feet. The Child was holding one of the play blocks in his outstretched paw. He made some kind of melodious chirp and held it up for her, wanting her to take it. 

“Oh, thank you,” she said, picking the item from his claw. He waddled away.

It was some kind of child’s toy, each side had different painted face probably for teaching colors. She rotated it in her hand, imagining each turn was like a different code, trying to tell her something. What was that little ditty? Red for courage, yellow for kindness, green for forgiveness, and blue for…what was blue for?

Her eyes sought Din’s shiny buckethead across the way as he returned to her with a fresh bowl of stew for himself and two mugs of water. He set one mug in front of her. As small as the gesture was, it made Cara’s heart swell. It was the man's birthday, she thought guiltily, she should have been the one bringing him food.

This man. Brave. Kind. Merciful. But of all his qualities, Cara was mostly thinking of Din's _goodness_. He had returned here, to these sisters, to this covert of Foundlings with nothing to offer but a maybe, and instead he had brought them hope.

“You all right?” He asked seeing the expression on her face.

“Nothing. Go eat.”

Din’s helmet cocked like he knew better.

Another chirp from the Child brought Cara's attention downward. He was holding another block, passing it to Cara.

"Oh, yes, thank you," said Cara politely, taking the toy. The kid made a sound which Cara thought perfectly summed up a ' _you're welcome.'_

Din was still hovering over her like a worried mother hen. “It’s really nothing," she told him, maybe a little too emphatically. She brought the mug to her lips and took a long sip of the cool water. If only to hide the way her chin wobbled again, threatening another kind of waterworks. It made Din, seeing right through her, place the steaming hot bowl down and put his hands on his hips.

“Will you tell me?”

“Go eat something. You’re about to pass out.”

He had to eat alone, of course. And around these other Mandalorian women, who lived so seemingly freer. Able to eat and drink unmasked, with company. And Din just – He just took it in stride. Accepted it. Because he was a good man, because he was - 

Blue, Cara thought, suddenly remembering that how little ditty went. Red for courage. Yellow for kindness. Green for forgiveness. And blue, blue was for patience.

“I’ll stand watch,” she told him. “No one will disturb you.”

“You don’t have to, you know.” He softened, his arms falling to his sides. “Do that. You don’t have to defend the Creed. Earlier…” He checked, frantically, that they truly were still alone before continuing. “I should have warned you. I – You didn’t have to.”

For the briefest of seconds, as she looked at his helmet, as she did everyday, she tried to imagine what he might look like under there. Instead, she only caught her own warped reflection in it. If the day would ever come when he could remove it, share his laugh, a meal with her, his eyes...

“And,” Din continued with a teasing jostle to her shoulder, trying to cheer her. “I can watch my own six.”

He had come back for her, not once, not twice. But three times! If her mother was still alive, she’d say, Carasynthia, that’s a man worth holding onto; that’s a man you don’t let walk away from you again. Her mother would also say, Carasynthia, don’t cry in public, your chin does this really unattractive thing when you start blubbering.

“But you don’t have to. Not all the time," she said to him, keeping her voice from cracking. "I’m here, aren’t I?”

Cara could read the look of such vulnerability on him as she said that – the gentle lift of his body followed by a rough inhale. Creed or no, she still knew him. She exactly who he was underneath that helmet. As many sided as the multicolored block in her hand. Her chest heaved - why did he continue to accept so little when he deserved so much more? It wasn’t fair! That thought shattered through her tough layers, tore right into her fragile heart with the speed of a wind turbine.

The kid was standing by Cara’s feet, again, holding another toy block he was becoming so fond of. She picked him up while he made pleased little noises, held him against her.

“Go on,” she told Din, jerking her chin at his lunch. “I’ll just sit here and squeeze him. Pretend I’m squeezing you.” She pressed the lower half of her face into the back of the baby’s head, inhaling its scent deeply, drawing comfort in its closeness.

Din remained impassive for a few, very heavy seconds. Then, gruffly, he took Cara’s biceps, tugging to make her stand, that she nearly dropped the baby, so he could place his shiny forehelm on her face. A bizarre couple of breaths passed, in which they just stood like that, touching foreheads. Cara kept thinking something was supposed to happen.

The baby made a content hum in her arms, sandwiched between them.

Cara scrunched her face, stifled a laugh. “O-kay…” she said lamely, confused as kriff when nothing did happen.

“Just, quiet,” Din growled. Exhaling so forcefully, that it escaped the lip of his helmet and Cara actually felt it hit her front. “I’m kissing you.”

Not able to move her arms to envelope him because she was holding the Child, or even respond in any meaningful way, Cara eyes fell shut letting her world narrow to the point of contact where they were touching, skin-to-beskar. Savoring it, despite grinning like a fool.

They stood like that until they’re breathing became matched. Sharing each gentle inhale and exhale. The worn leather on the back of her neck as he cradled her head, thumbs rubbing behind her ears. He even nuzzled deeper into it, sliding the smooth beskar across the plane of her forehead. It was so…so intimate. A marginal amount of heat radiated outward from his body – the man ran hot. Cara’s belly frothed with desire.

This Mando was…this man was _something_.

There came a chirp from the area of her tits, a soft tickling on her chin. They separated. Din kept her close, his hands like a personal furnace on her waist. The Child was nuzzling the toy block against his own tiny forehead, and one large ear brushed the underside of Cara’s chin. He made a garbled sentence in his baby talk.

“Yes, you can have one too,” Din said, attentive as ever, and with such tenderness. Slowly, displaying much more control than he did with Cara, he lowered his forehelm to kiss the kid’s brow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beroya - bounty hunter  
> riduur - spouse/husband/wife  
> 'ika - a suffix, diminutive, used affectionately  
> \---------------------------  
> me: YEAH. I'm going to write more din/cara SMUT. YEAh, they're having Hot SEx, oh...oh look...a little plot, a little angst. oh look cute baby FLUFF...oh look more FLUFF.  
> I'm soft. *cries*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which neither want to be alone. And then things get messy - but in a good way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little plot. a lot more smut. you get it. just some good ole fashioned (smutty) escapism in these trying times. Hope you're all staying safe out there!

She held her breath. This was promising. He was still awake. She could hear him shuffling around on the other side of the door. Vague sounds of rustling fabric, gentle clicks of beskar as they were removed.

Stars. Cara was fucked.

Embarrassingly, she thought of calling it all off, of hightailing it out of there like there were a bunch of Imps on her tail. But Cara’s feet were rooted to the spot.

See, as much as she was the brawn of this little operation and the beauty, Cara figured, she was also the brains. Greef Karga had told her as much on Nevarro one time: Brawn, Beauty, and the Brains.

Bantha shit, she didn’t feel much like the brains right about now.

She longed for the weight of her warm blanket, of tucking herself back under the covers, burying her head under the pillow and forgetting all this. Of the days when she could deny her feelings, wrestle her raging will into submission. But the thought of spending the night alone, after the day she’d had…

So, shivering in a worn sleeping shirt and underpants, the solider with a big heart raised a fist and knocked twice, softly, on the door. No turning back now.

“One sec,” she heard him say. But it sounded different, less tinny. Her breath caught.

Did Cara mention she was fucked?

* * *

They had decided to stay with the Taj sisters through dinner.

Zar-El, after noticing that Cara had been admiring her knife, spent most of the afternoon showing Cara her extensive collection. They had a few rounds throwing knives at a jerry-rigged target on the wall, which the sisters had set up for their own weapons training, making a little game out of it with some kind of lazily adhered-to set of rules with point systems. Though the younger woman wasn’t much of a talker (not surprisingly, Cara, having boarded with Din long enough didn’t mind it, and in fact, had come to appreciate the kinds of compatibility offered by shared silence), sharing only when asked a direct question, but at one point, her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had turned to Cara with a coy smile.

“So, the beroya…he’s not your –” There was that word again. The Mando’a one that Cara couldn’t pronounce.

“What?” She had just thrown her knife, and it landed on the target board with a decidedly loud thwack.

“I mean, you are not spoken for?”

Cara screwed her face up. “Like are we…together?”

Zar-El nodded, twirling a knife in her hand. “Your riduur.”

Cara sounded it out. The other woman corrected her, rolling the r’s.

“Riduur,” she parroted.

"Almost.” Zar-El’s crooked smile was endearing. “It means spouse. Is he…?” The question hung expectantly in the air.

Cara’s answering bark of laughter echoed in the large room. “Whoa, whoa – you think I’m – !” And here she doubled over, holding her belly. “Is that what word means?” Cara said, finally recovering, wiping stray tears. To Zar-El’s assenting nod, she only laughed some more, until she snorted, most unladylike.

“Oh _thank_ Maker!”

Zar-El’s brows knitted together in confusion.

“This whole time, I thought it was….I thought it was a dirty word,” said Cara, struggling to string a sentence together. She held her stitching side. “Like you were wondering if I was his whore or something.”

Cara nearly fell over in another series of laughs. The Mandalorian woman shook her head, but smiled back, a little bewildered. She picked up another knife and it went sailing across the space neatly tucking it next to the one Cara had just thrown.

“I have heard of these Tribes that practice as he does. Elva knew of them years ago. We had assumed they had all died out.” She made a thoughtful expression while glancing at the target board, where she was roundly kicking Cara’s ass in knife throwing.

Cara preferred blasters and heavy guns anyway. Much more efficient.

“But you’ve never seen his face?”

“Nope.”

“Not once?”

“Nope.”

Zar-El seemed to be focusing on the knife in her hand with rather an abundance of interest.

Cara shrugged. “It’s never really come up.”

Well, that was stretching the truth a little.

“The eyes,” Zar-El said, “are the windows to the soul. How do you know your Mandalorian’s soul?”

Cara didn’t even have to think to answer that one. “There are other ways of learning that,” she said, thinking of how Din had ended up back here.

Zar-El considered this. “Still,” she said, bobbing her head in understanding. “A man like that is not for me.”

Cara doubted if any man at all was for Zar-El.

“What?” Cara asked with a grunt, thinking of Din, and trying to make light. “Uh, grumpy?”

The laugh Zar-El gave was musical. “Funny, and deadly,” she said, giving an appreciate once-over of Cara, lingering on the woman’s tan biceps.

Cara set up her toss; it landed a little off center, but still vibrated with residual force – a little stronger than she had meant. When she looked over to her companion, the woman was biting her lip, her dark eyes heated; they seemed to be absorbing Cara.

“But if you have never seen his face, then…” she said, with a hint of a flirtation. She took a bold, half-step towards her. Zar-El was an attractive woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, pretty, with features rounder than the ones dominant in her sisters, and her black hair fell smoothly around her face, coming to a straight-edge, sharp as a blade, at her chin.

Cara’s eyes dipped to the woman’s full lips as she leaned in closer, dropping her voice. “Then, he has never put his mouth on you.”

The Shock Trooper flushed, blinked. Was this woman really…?

Suddenly, the Mandalorian made an elaborate twirl, like a dancer, and two knives flew out of one hand. The blades sang as they sailed through the air, embedding roughly in the target on the wall – a double bullseye.

Feeling all her blood zoom out of her brain and pool in her lower abdomen, Cara caught the sheen of Din’s helmet from across the space. Nel was still on guard duty, and Elva was giving a lesson to a group of Foundlings around a holo-book. Nearby, the Child was playing with those toy blocks he’d become fond of and some of the other smaller Foundlings of this covert. Din was looking the picture of relaxation, legs stretched up on a crate, occupied with wiping his modified blaster. The man was fastidious.

Almost as if he knew they’d been just talking about him, his helm swiveled in their direction, catching Cara’s eye, he gave a feeble nod. The bastard probably had his audials dialed up to maximum sensitivity. Which might mean he’d heard their whole exchange.

Quickly, much too guiltily, she looked away, her mouth like sandpaper.

“You are very patient then.” Zar-El said from Cara’s side, her eyes downcast.

Cara didn’t know about that.

* * *

During dinner itself (a humble affair, but filling), Nel, back from guard duty, dominated the conversation. Sticking Din with question after question about his bounty-hunting with the determination of the galaxy’s most intimidating inquisitor. It was all to Cara’s utter amusement, especially for a girl who had been brought up largely isolated from other clans or people in general, she had a vivid imagination and academically specific questions about bounty hunting. Even Din seemed floored by breadth of Nel’s knowledge concerning his (sometime-former) profession.

He spoke modestly though, and Cara knew enough of these stories by now to know it was heavily edited and an abridged version, intentionally leaving some of the more gruesome and pertinent details out. Still, knowing he hated the spotlight on him, he was tolerantly, if not a little begrudgingly, indulging the young Mandalorian’s fascination with a profession far more complicated than her youthful, idealistic understandings could fathom.

Cara liked listening to him speak, so hung on to every word. He had a nice voice and being usually sparse with his words, hearing him talk for a long period in any capacity proved a special occasion.

Din cast Cara another one of his self-conscious sighs, which he was doing every so often during the interrogation, to which she only responded with a telling flick of her eyebrows: you're on ya own, buddy.

As the evening wore on, the adults stayed up late talking, until one after another the children’s eyelids began to droop, or they yawned loudly. So, Cara and Din took their cue to leave, head back to the Crest, and continue on their way.

Cara received a hug and a kiss on the cheek from each sister.

“I hope we meet again,” Zar-El said to Cara, shaking her hand, while her sisters fawned over the little one. They seemed to have changed their minds about calling the Child ugly earlier, for they all gave him emphatic pets on the head and cooed over him as Din set him in his sling.

Cara’s warm smile was enough to set butterflies in the younger woman’s belly.

“Take care of your sisters,” she added, thinking fleetingly of her brothers. “You’re very lucky to have each other.”

“Good luck, beroya,” said Elva, firmly shaking his vambrace. “We can never thank you enough.”

“Tell my Armorer, Din Djarin sent you,” he said. “This is the Way.”

The woman recoiled, eyes wide, but then shook herself with stunned laughter. “We haven’t heard that in a long time, have we girls?” She tugged her sisters to her side and slung an arm around each. “And, what do we say back?”

“This is the Way,” Zar-El and Nel said simultaneously.

The Taj sisters’ eyes danced with hope.

* * *

Later that night, back on the Crest, Cara’s assumptions were correct, he was in the middle of undressing. Lately, he began relaxing his rules about how much armor he wore around her. Seeing as he had also just spent the better part of an hour with an overtired infant, reckoning the less metal while he rocked a baby to sleep, the better.

The dark material of his flight suit was rolled down to his hips, exposing just the lightweight linen long sleeve shirt underneath it, in the same earthen color as the rest of clothes. Patchy, with a few pitiful holes where he had unevenly repaired tears over the years.

“Weren’t expecting someone else, were ya?” She teased him while leaning against the open door and crossing her arms.

“Well, the baby doesn’t usually knock.” He kicked one boot off, rubbed his foot.

“Where do you think he learned that?” Thinking of how Din himself had turned up unannounced in her bunk last night.

Din’s other boot was proving mutinous. He had to thrash and pull to get it off, groaning when it finally popped off. Cara watched all this with an amused expression.

“Finally get him down?”

“Only if I let him sleep with the toy block that he stole from the Taj Covert.” He rubbed absently at a sore muscle along his neck. “I’m beginning to see why your holodramas are so effective.”

Cara smirked, shaking her head just a tad guiltily. “Yeah, all that drama, and he drifts right off.”

Din’s sleeping area was even more modest than her own. She fought the urge to want to call him out on it, seeing as how this was _his_ ship, he should have given himself the bigger room. They’d already exhausted this argument though, months ago when she had first joined him after Nevarro. He finally cleaned out the storage space enough so that Cara could get her own room, and at her insistence, upon finding out that he often slept in his chair in the cockpit or on the floor, that he get one for himself, now that the Child had taken his old one. She had used the Creed then as her defense, asserting that he deserved a private space where he could _not_ have to worry about any accidental walk-ins while unmasked.

He’d acquiesced, eventually. Always put his own needs last, even if it meant waiting around for hours to eat or sleep, or wash up, when all onboard were asleep, just to have a moment of privacy. The thought plucked at her heart. An unresolved ache, having made its savage retreat earlier, receded to the back of her mind, came rushing forward again.

Her face must have fallen because he shifted subtly towards her and Cara could read the pointed expression he was giving her. At times, even she was willing to concede, Din was really the brains of this operation.

Giving in with an irked sigh worthy of Din’s repertoire (and really, she spent _way_ too much time with this man), it was only two full strides before she was seated right on Din’s lap, thighs thrown over the beskar pieces still on his legs, forearms resting on his tense shoulders.

“Hi,” he said. Because, what else does one say when a beautiful woman lands in your lap?

“Hi,” she whispered back. Then, because she’d been thinking about it all day, she bent down and began kissing his neck.

His reaction was immediate: he inhaled sharply, going rigid underneath her. The touch on his neck sending him to blissful heights unforeseen, like a spark of spice to the brain.

“Where’s – this…?” He was losing air, and coherence. Cupping her butt and whining, as she made a particularly toothy scrape along his sensitive skin.

Greedily, she pulled at the hem of his shirt until he lifted his arms and it went over his helm – the neckline wide enough to accommodate the helmet. Clearing a fresh path along all the newly exposed skin, across his pecks to the other shoulder, she kissed until she came across a familiar collage of scars.

“Can I stay here tonight?” She was barely brave enough to make a sound.

Din always heard her. She only knew his helmet moved because she was perceptive enough to see how it caught the gleam of the soft lights, winking out of the corner of her eye. She kept her focus on the scars, touching them under her fingertips. They were close to his neck, where the beskar didn’t cover.

Chuckling slightly, as her lips touched his neck again. “C’mere,” he said, and it was all rough, splintering with sentiment.

Her body softened, defenses slipping with a relieved sigh as his hands massaged on her thighs and butt. She folded in her legs, hugging her knees to his hips. Her capable arms wrapped around his shoulders, and his hands came up her back, and they hugged like that, warm and tight. Bodies so close it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Cara’s face fell, slotted next to his helm, buried in his neck. They stayed, hugging, until Cara’s knees fell asleep and her toes tingled. Until she had to lift her heated face to retrieve air.

Instinctively, he stiffened when her hands fell onto the cheek plating of his helmet, but after a few breaths, he calmed, and she roiled, breathless, knowing that he trusted her enough not to despoil his Creed. She made no move to lift the beskar, rather cradled it lovingly as if he was his own face and not unfeeling metal.

He rubbed smooth circles on her thighs. “No dirty jokes?” He was almost disappointed.

“I’m trying to be serious for a second,” Cara mocked, but even that didn’t hold up and she cracked a smile. “You know, it doesn’t make a lick of difference. Not to me, or the kid. You’re not a Mandalorian because you wear this. But because of this.”

She placed a hand over his heart, stared meaningful at the crack of his visor.

She only just caught herself from dissolving into giggles, thinking where else she could place her wandering hands with a witticism about how one could always tell a Mandalorian by their _girth_ –

Yeah, save that one for later. Her cheeks blossomed with color anyway, and she briefly wondered if his infrared lens would give away exactly where all the heat was pooling in her body.

“Any _way_.” Getting back on track. Scooted her butt on his thighs, and –

Whoa. Speaking of girth.

Cara licked her lips. Forced to herself to think of anything but the noticeable twitching in his crotch. She schooled her features to seriousness once again, hoping to denote the gravity of her words.

“I’ll always defend your Creed, Din. For as long as it’s important to you.”

As long as you're important to me, she wanted to add, but it seemed to already hang, unspoken, between them.

“It’s not the burden you think it is,” his soft exhale wavered in static.

She cradled the helmet again, taking in the hazy outline of her own reflection in it, chewing on her lip thoughtfully.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he added. He had found a knot of muscle over her knee and was working his fingers deeply into it, loosening the tension.

“But don’t you –” She started and stopped. Then rephrased: “I hope I’m not offending you when I say this –” Cara thought of the Taj sisters, their unmasked faces. Zar-El’s words zigged and zagged around the interior of her skull: _he has never put his mouth on you._

“Aren’t you afraid you’re missing out on things?”

“You’re not offending me,” he said, gently. The tiniest of self-deprecating chuckles shook his shoulders. “And all the time.”

And then, as if revealing his most inane desire, his thumb dragged along at her dry, chapped lips. The heat in Cara’s belly frothed again, and she almost moaned at the trill that traveled down her spine.

She rolled her hips until they were brushing against the tenting in his crotch. The contrast of the heat catching on the flimsy material of her underpants and the cool metal of his beskar plates under her thighs caused a whirlwind of sensation, and she shuddered and rocked against him. His thumb staggered, swiping along the groove of her bottom teeth, gathering slickness to paint it on her dry lips.

Her pupils widened as her arousal grew. “Fuck, Mando,” she cursed at him around his thumb. “Pretty cock like yours, you gotta be pretty under there.”

There was a blare of static from his vocoder, like he had hissed wetly right into it.

"What?” She said, all innocently, blinking up at him. “You like my dirty mouth!”

Something vaguely jumbled like “ _makerhelpmeIdo_ ” came out, but too softly and static-filled for Cara’s ears to hear correctly. She just pushed his torso until he lay flat on the bunk, and she hovered over him, caressing his sides, feeling the planes of his stomach, taut as he arched and writhed under her exploratory touch. Hotly pulling on a nipple with her lips, lathering it in her spittle, then blowing on it sent him keening some high-pitched wail she’d never heard before, pumping his hips into the open socket of her spread legs, wanting friction.

“Easy there, Mando,” she purred.

She did the same little trick to his other nipple. This time, his neck strained forward, lurching off the bed. “Cara,” he seethed at her through a rigid jaw, urging her on.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to do,” she said, panting wetly onto his sternum, suddenly flushing, her mind rushing forward as she spoke her desires out loud. “I want to…nghh, I want t-to suck your cock.”

The man went so still beneath her, and for once she couldn’t read his body language, and she was hit with the force of naked _want_. Desiring so badly to see his face – to see him processing this. Did his mouth fall open? Had his tongue dash out to wet his lips? Were his eyes flashing with lust?

Then, his head fell back, nearly striking the wall, and he groaned, so low and deep and shameless – it rattled Cara, made her clench her already weeping pussy. She watched, rapt, as his throat bobbed as he swallowed, the muscles rippling so fluidly she debated just sucking a bruise right then and there.

“Would you let me?” Her urgent whispers ushered forth and she put her mouth on his torso again, kissing and licking. “Would let me suck your cock? Has anyone ever? Has anyone ever –mhm, put their mouth there?”

Din’s jumble of “yeahyeahyeah” were riling Cara, sending more and more heat to her core, searing like a brand.

She crouched between his open legs. Her face level to the waistband of his pants, where the flight suit was still open on his hips, his bulge enormous. It was rock hard when she put her lips right on it, panted hotly over the clothed member and his whole body shivered.

“Yeah, do it,” Din said, sitting up abruptly to start pulling the fabric off his lower half, which got caught on the beskar still on his thighs. His usually nimble fingers were useless, brain firing misdirections, nerves short-circuiting, trembling around his _needneedneed_.

“Leave ‘em,” Cara directed curtly, stopping his hands when he failed to unlatch the beskar on the third try. “Lie back.”

“Take…this off.” Din’s fingers were tight around her lightweight top, and in one swift movement, she ripped it up and over her head. Breasts bared to Din’s admiring eyes.

Cara returned the view, coyly looking up at him, drinking in the expanse of his body before her sights, smoother, more intoxicating than any of the liquor in the galaxy. The obvious tenting directly in her foreground of her visual, the exquisitely roiling muscles of his abdomen as he gulped for air. The broad expanse of his chest, leaning back on his elbows. His hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, white knuckled around the sheets. The charged look he was giving her through the visor – what with the way he kept panting around his teeth, the angle of his helmet sharply pointed downward to where she was perched over his crotch with anticipation. He was so…so beautiful like this.

When she pulled that gorgeous cock out, Cara’s mouth watered. Something scorching and delicious licked at her core, tightening like a corkscrew. Her panties were ruined, sodden, heavy with her leaking wetness, and she was practically buzzing at the thought of just petting her clit. Rubbing exactly right at the little circle of wetness on her panties, right over the sensitive nub.

Instead, she puts her hand on him, starts stroking. There’s already a bead of precum at the top, and it grows, dripping down the side as she works up a rhythm.

Din is _silent_ , tight as a wire. He doesn’t relax under her ministrations, but is stiff and angular, thighs like steel as his hips start lifting up, up, moving with in tandem with her own fist around his cock.

“Oh, lucky you,” she crooned, her vocal cords suddenly tight. She arched a brow at him. “I’m told I have a talented tongue.”

Din only squeaked.

Cara lowered her head and licked a long stripe from base to tip, savoring the taste of him, the musky smell of his warmth. She kissed the very tip, puckering so just the bulbous top slipped in and out of her mouth, wetting her lips. Cheekily, she snuck a glance up at him, and had to blush.

The full frontal focus he had on her was… Now, Cara wasn’t one for poetic turns of phrases. It was like being caught in a tractor beam; it was that intense. While she licked and tasted him, hand still working up and down – Cara had a sneaking suspicion this is what his bounty hunting was like.

The single-minded determination and hyper-focus. The narrowing of all thought, every sensation to the job before him. Not letting a single detail escape his notice. And oh! To be on the receiving end of all that.

Stars, her head spun, and she moaned lewdly around his cock, letting her eyes fall shut.

His gaze was eviscerating. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to handle it if there wasn’t a visor between them. She bent her head and took him wholly in her mouth. And oh, the noise he made – Cara would never forget that!

She took him as far as she could before her gag reflex would kick in, swallowing loudly around the girth. Din made another desperate sound, nearly chocking on air; his hips stuttered to a halt. He spewed forth a series of curses that even Cara, if she’d bothered to pay attention to anything other than his taste and the weight of him on her tongue while she bobbed her head, she might have been more impressed.

Her hair must have fallen like a curtain around her, obscuring his view because she felt him nimbly brushing it aside, holding it delicately against the side of her head, barely touching her scalp. Cara took that as invitation to keep going.

Timing her breathing, she took him in deeper. Sliding her talented tongue on the upswing, swirling it around the tip, purple and leaking. Delighted in the noises he made, before gliding back down, hollowing her cheeks. Saliva and precum gathered around his base, leaking through her fingers, and she followed her fist in the tail of her mouth.

She didn’t know how long she kept doing that before she realized that rich baritone hum in the background was Din’s voice.

“…like that, yeah-h. Fuck, Cara – fuck-k. That wicked…m-mouth – that wicked _mouth_ of yours.”

It was a bolt of lightning to Cara’s clit, and her pussy spasmed, feeling neglected. She groaned, drooling more so around his cock. That sent him spiraling.

“Ah, _Cara_ – You – you’re…s’good. You – s’fucking g-oo – good.”

At one particularly smug move of her tongue as she traveled along his shaft, his fingers tightened on the ends of her hair and he tugged. Her mouth popped off with an obscene wet sound. A thread of saliva stretching between her mouth and his dick.

“I wanna cum inside…” he panted. “Wanna come inside you.” There was a fine layer of sweat along his torso, and his abs fluttered before her face with the effort of his breathing.

Cara had lost track of time, so absorbed by making him feel good, she had barely processed that she was on the verge of making him cum. “Yeah,” she said, agreeably. “Inside my mouth.”

He gripped his wide base, as if chocking off an orgasm right then and there. She couldn’t take her eyes off the way his large hand looked around his cock. Fuck, had she really been able to deep throat all that?

“I want to taste you,” she said with reasonable flair, kissing his bony hip.

Din grunted, rubbed at her jaw. She swatted his hand away from his cock, so she could stroke him. She buried her nose along his hip between the crease of his leg, sucking one of his balls into her mouth.

“Fuck, you have me so wet,” she said, coming up for air, then took his other ball into her mouth, making sure to lick filthily at the underside. They were tightly nestled against him…he was so close.

Keeping her eyes trained right on his visor, she licked him, starting at the large vein on the underside, teasing at his frenulum. Then, with a wicked smirk, she swallowed him whole, and sucking, reached to pet one wet finger underneath his balls at the soft little patch of skin right behind –

Din make a gritty sound like a growl, and then his balls twitched in her hand and he was coming, exploding down her throat; hips and belly moving raggedly. Cara let her jaw go slack as hot liquid splashed down her mouth, moaning and flexing her own hips forward. She sucked every last drop off him, keeping her lips clamped around him until he started going flaccid in her mouth and he squirmed wildly beneath her with overstimulation.

She lifted her head to give him a satisfied grin, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. The man had finally gone boneless, sighing and groaning, murmuring something unintelligible in the language of his Creed. She moved to sit beside him on the bunk.

He had hiked one hand around her breast, flicking her nipple lazily, or squeezing it between his roughhewn fingers.

“How’s that for a birthday present, huh, pard’ner?” She bent to nip at the soft pillow of his belly, and he tensed under the light scraping of her teeth there. Strands of her dark hair stuck to her face, and he gently tucked them behind her ear.

His knuckles brushed her face. “Did you – ?” He gulped thickly. “Did you swallow…all of it?”

Cara nodded, nuzzling against his palm.

“Seven hells, woman,” Din’s exhale shook with effort. He reached between them and pushed aside the soaked seam of her underpants, sliding a thick finger past her swollen lips. Cara’s head fell forward, bumping his ribcage.

“So beautiful,” and she could hear his soft, appraising smile.

He gathered the slickness there and rubbed it around her overlooked clit, throbbing under the pressure of his fingers.

Then his hands disappeared, and she made a rough noise at the loss. But he was pulling her to climb on top of him, petting her thighs and palming her ass. Their combined breathing harsh in the enclosed space. Then, he entered with two fingers, still slick and hot with her arousal.

“Want you to cum on my hand.”

“Din!” She bucked, widening her knees around his torso.

“Just want you _dripping_ down my arm.” His deep rumbling voice going straight to her clit, lighting her on fire. “Can you do that for me?”

Cara bit back an elaborate curse with a gasp. “Now, who has a dirty mouth!”

His breathy chuckle did things to her throbbing sex, and she wailed while he worked his deft fingers, scissoring and stretching inside her. She clenched around them, tightening with each pump. He drew them out fully, and she huffed indignantly at the loss, but he was circling wetly around her clit, and that made lovely little shivers shake her strong thighs. Her whole body becoming taut and trembling like she was glass and he had found the key vibration to shatter her.

When he pulled away a _second_ time, Cara was about ready to throttle him. She humped at the air, her pussy clenching around nothing. The lovely pressure within her receding. He chuckled some more as he rubbed her sides, tweaked at her hardened nipples.

She shot an angry look at his helm, too stupefied to get her tongue to work. Then, as if vindictive, she ground her hips on his belly, smearing a wet stain right on his navel. Two can play at this game.

He only huffed, but his hands tightened on her breasts, and Cara swore she felt the flicking of a half-hard cock poking at the back of her thigh. He lifted her hips to he could lightly tease along the junction of her thighs, barely skimming the sodden lips of her pussy.

“You wanna f – fuck my h-hand?” Din could barely get the words out, so tangled in his own arousal at seeing her above him, all frazzled and wanton.

Cara eyes shuttered in bliss, and she nodded, humming indulgently, as he went back to fingering her. She ground against those wonderful digits, now back to rightfully sinking into her spasming, fluttering sex. Her breasts heaved, jiggled indecently as she thrust her hips, while Din, not one to miss out on it, was kneading and gently squeezing the soft flesh.

Cara was close, already so tightly wound, ready and aching for him after all his edging. After giving him the first (and best!) blowjob of his life. She could feel every rasp of his skin inside her, every ridge on his knuckles. Her throat went dry and she tried to lick her lips, finding that she could still _taste_ him, remembered how thickly he had coated her throat, while he fucked her mouth –

“Nghhhh,” was all she could say, as his fingers left her again. “Fucking –” Cara’s anger lost steam, but she breathed bitterly through her nose. She’d been so close that time.

“Almost there,” Din told her, soothingly. His grip was too tight on her ass for her to grind roughly on his belly, wanting to smear against him. “You close?”

“What do you think?!” She ground her teeth, heavily panting. She tried to pet her own clit, but Din swatted her hand away, and she had to huff and puff, blowing wisps of hair off her hot face.

“Good girl,” Din said, low and eager, when she finally calmed down.

His fingers sunk into her again, and Cara’s ecstatic moans ricocheted off the durasteel walls. All it took was some dexterous swipes of his thumb along her aching clit, and then she was crashing, blindly planting her face into his chest, hips erratic as she chased the sweet pressure, until she saw stars exploding behind her eyelids and the white-hot bloom of her orgasm upending through her.

She coated Din’s fingers – the wet-sucking noise of them drilling forcefully into that pleasure spot inside her, told her how much she had released. Din’s soft praises and gorgeous moans were lost to the roaring in her ears, and – sweet Maker! She was still coming! Her body pulsed and hummed, and she clenched and clenched as wave after wave just washed right over her. It went on and on and on, oozing out of her, and Cara – her moans stoppered in her throat, mouth open in silent scream, gripping his fleshy biceps as a fresh surge took her as he circled on her clit – Cara was beginning to think that there was something to this edging.

The smell of their shared musky sex filled the room, tinged with iron, and when she, spent, sweetly languid like she was wine-drunk, pushed herself off his chest to look at his fingers pulling out of her, she blushed deeply at the glistening red and brown drips falling down his wrist.

“Oh fuck!” She gushed, suddenly shamefaced in the dimly lit room.

Welp. That explained all her emotions over the last few days.

“Did I hurt you?” Din’s concern was adorable, aghast at the mix of blood and cum shining on his hand.

“N-no,” she said shakily, moving off him in case any more dripped out. “It’s just my – I’ll get a –” She stood, and her head swam so strong she nearly tipped over, the rush of mortification quickly overriding her post-orgasmic haze.

“Sorry,” she blurted out. She wiggled out of her panties wiping them against her sensitive pussy, then threw her shirt back on so she could look a little less like she got the daylights fucked out of her and tiptoed to the fresher.

Her suspicions were confirmed when, rinsing her panties and wringing them out, a heap of red flushed down the drain. Distantly, she put together the pieces, that the ache in her lower abdomen from a couple hours ago was her cramping, and not just her usual-Cara-flavored-horndog libido. She found a fresh towel and wiped at her crotch, then she started because Din, silently agile as he could be sometimes, was suddenly behind her, crowding her in the too small fresher. He was lamely holding his pants up for modesty, but Cara still caught sight of the streaks of her own juices spread on his lower abdomen.

“You okay?” His helmet cocked in a predictably concerned way. She avoided looking at how his closed fist was held modestly away from the rest of his body, still dripping with bright red –

“Yeah, yeah. Lemme –” She wet a fresh washcloth and took his hand to clean over the small sink, fiercely avoiding his gaze. Slowly, she felt herself building up a wall between them.

The evidence of their messy sex washed down the drain.

His hand fell to her lower back, steady and warm as she silently wiped the washcloth on his body, mirroring the cleaning he had given her (had it really been?) just the night before.

“Hey,” he murmured, right next to her ear, when she still didn’t meet his eyes. “What’s this? Not giving me the silent treatment, are you?”

Cara had to laugh uncomfortably at that, cheeks, and pussy, still twinging. “No,” she said, but it was too quiet to be convincing.

“Not hurt?”

“Just my pride.” She wrung out the washcloth in the sink, dipping back to wipe his softening cock.

Din hissed at the contact, still sensitive, and he touched her wrist gently when she pulled away. “All I seem to remember is having best sex of my life. You should be gloating.”

Her lips flinched into the barest curve of a smile. She finally met the stone-faced visor of his helmet. There was no horror, no shame, no recoiling disgust on his stance, just his loyal – granted, fucked-out and slightly sluggish – presence, typically Din, all blurred and gentle edges under the sharp outlines of metal.

Cara’s breath came out in a loud whoosh.

“Nothing wrong with a little nature.” His hand was drawing pleasing little patterns on the small of her back, tugging the hem of her shirt and tickling down her backside.

Her smile broadened across her pretty face, crinkling her eyes.

“Actually,” he ducked his head, made a half-step closer so he could affectionately bump the forehelm against her steamy cheek, “it was really hot.”

Cara’s blush instantly fogged up the cool metal on her face.

“All of it,” he confirmed, and he nudged her chin with his knuckles. “I’ll be in my bunk. When you’re ready.”

And then he left one very awestruck Cara behind.

That feeling didn’t leave her, not even when she woke up, nearly eight hours later, quite comfortable, even with her face smushed against the hard planes of his shoulder blades, holding around his waist. Wondering how in the whole kriffin’ galaxy she had ended up a big spoon to a Mandalorian.


End file.
